Saline Drops
by Cyanide Lemons
Summary: Time snaps like a thread. (If by the end of the story, the woman isn't dead so that the hero can triumph over personal evil, the story is a tragedy and the hero dies.)
1. Chapter 1

AN:/I'm not done MOC, CC and SSWT, although I'm not at a point where I'm willing to continue either. This was a compromise, where I'm trying to drum up enough KHR motivation to continue. Unfortunately, I don't think I have enough understanding of the characters at this point, nor do I have anyone to share muses with while writing, so this might be break time.

On a completely unrelated note, I've hit my "Terrible Canadian" faze and have about 3 horrible, horrible Hockey RPF fics saved under the "guilty pleasure" folder, so who knows where my writing is going now a days.

-/

* * *

Time snaps like a thread.

There's the sensation of something fraying, of an unmooring of reality all around her, and then before she can take a breath there's a snap and she's falling to the ground. The wind whistles past her ears, buzzing through her skull. The white noise blocks out anything she could have seen in the descent, and she's almost grateful. The cold grasp of something in the dark almost has her heart bursting out of the embrace of her ribs.

She's gasping on her stomach, vision blurring through the vertigo, watching the dirt waver. There's shouting going on all around, though she can't make out words. Instead, she concentrates on taking a breath.

One. Two. Steadies her head against the pounding behind her eyes.

She's just shifting back onto hands and knees when a pair of small dark shoes enters her point of view. The leather is scuffed with dirt and something shiny like blood, but they still look outrageously expensive. A small hand finds itself on her shoulder.

The smoke finally lifts enough that she feels like she can breath, and she struggles to lift her head.

The small face of Reborn, still a child, stands before her.

* * *

It's not the strangest thing the strongest hitman in the world has seen, not when lined up against the Arcobaleno and Checkerface, but it ranks up there.

The woman falls out of the sky, a dead weight that just pops up in between the two fighting factions. There's a pause as black suited men take in the new arrival, waiting for an attack, before one enterprising gunman tries his luck in the surprise.

Gunshots soon burst forth once again.

Reborn ignores them for the most part, instead taking out the nearest idiotic Mafioso and steadily making his way to the centre of the fray. Considering the tech some of the opposing family is lugging around, he doesn't want to take a chance on the randomly appearing woman as a fluke. Considering his luck, she's probably a bomb.

As he gets nearer – and the fighting sparser the closer he gets to it, men falling like flies – the woman starts moving a little, sluggishly. Not dead then.

He gets there just as she starts lifting herself up, flower dress sticking to the mud and chipped nailed hands shaking as they try and find purchase on the ground.

He taps one hand on a skinny shoulder and keeps one eye of the chaos around them while the other does a quick inventory. Japanese, possibly a mix, middle age, older then he originally thought up close, with light brown hair cut near the chin and the sort of leanest that usually means either hard times or entertainment industry. There's a scar peeking out from the back of her dress, and despite the pastel fabric she's wearing sensible shoes, so he upgrades her from "potential civilian caught too close to flame active experiments" to "possible assassin".

He's still a gentleman though, so he lets her lean back more and blink blurrily around. She's shaking, and not really responsive, so he feels comfortable enough stowing away his gun and using his other hand to settle her further.

"Steady." He says, keen eyes watching as the fog lifts from her eyes a little, only for the deeper sort of confusion to fill it.

"What?" The woman says in Japanese with what sounds like numb lips. He makes a note of a possible concussion and tries a charming smile before responding in kind.

"You're a little knocked up, took a little tumble. Do you have a husband I could call to pick you up?" He asks, all innocent guile. The fighting has died down, in Vongola's favour of course, so he feels confident in playing the concerned citizen helping a fallen housewife.

"No. No." She says, lifting a hand to her face to rub her forehead. There's a tan line where a ring would sit on it. "He's dead."

Reborn nods, mentally filling that away a long with a projected timeline. Not wearing mourning clothing, nor the ring, but still sporting a thin band of paler skin around the ring finger.

"A son maybe?" He asks next, shifting and subtly signalling Caullie, his second on this mission, to call it in. His nervous subordinate scrambles to locate a phone while the rest of the men go about cleaning up the surroundings of groaning men and broken windows. The street is empty except for the Mafioso and the woman, so it's easy to see where their attention is currently directed. A few of them are fiddling with guns, although they have enough of a mind to keep them pointed away from where Reborn is trying to do damage control.

She shakes her head, before looking ill at the motion.

"He's – No." She mumbles, before her eyes find his and her face clears a little.

"Where am I?" She tries pulling away, going to stand. He lets her make it to her feet, a little annoyed at the height difference, but shakes his head at his men behind her. No danger for now.

"Naples, Italy." He says, correctly guessing that isn't the answer she's looking for by the downturn to her lips.

"And the date?" She asks, still shaky but looking more and more stable the longer she's on her feet. Reborn feels a shiver work itself into his core, but keeps his smile through it.

"June third." He responds. He gets a wobbly nod in return, before the silence descends thicker then before. Her eyes are quickly turning glassy again.

"The year?" She says, sounding like it's an afterthought.

Reborn feels the shiver grow and lets the smile fall. He narrows his eyes at dishevelled but blank face of the mystery woman and silently signals the surrounding men. He's suddenly reminded of the Bovino family, and their supposed research into time altering ammunition. There was a lot of gunfire from experimental weaponry going on.

"What's your name?" He asks instead of answering. The woman blinks at him a few times before smiling.

"Sawada Nana. But just call me Mama, everyone does."


	2. Chapter 2

They usher the woman into a black van, nestled between Reborn and his second and a medic, and drive towards headquarters. She's oddly placid, letting herself be manhandled and examined by the medic, suffering the attention of the black clad men around them. Caullie fiddles with his cuff sleeves with the kind of nervousness that usually drives Reborn to murder, but he can't find it in himself for that kind of aggression right now.

There's nothing to sate bloodlust like a little mystery.

"And you remember nothing about what happened before you fell?" He prods again. He gets a shrug in return and a dirty look from the medic, who's prodding the back of her head with a gloved hand.

"The last thing I remember is going to the store for groceries." She says. He catches the eye of the medic and signals to her still foggy expression, to which he gets a nod. A concussion then, annoying.

"Well I'm sure we'll figure it out." Caullie says, with an awkward smile. Reborn ignores him.

"Why don't we go over some basic information first. Any living family members we can call?" He asks. Before he can get his answer the sound of his phone going off rings out, and he has to hold up a hand in apology.

"Ciao." He says into the small device.

"Reborn." Sawada Iemitsu barks, voice coming out tiny and stressed over the phone. Reborn settles back and crosses his legs again.

"Iemitsu." He says levelly, keeping an eye on the woman at the same time. Her head turns at his voice but it's almost impossible to determine whether she's reacting to the name or not. Almost.

Her hand creeps to her absent wedding ring and she rubs at the skin there, like she expects to feel cool metal instead.

Reborn ticks off another box in his head and turns his attention back to the idiot in his ear.

"Where is she?" Iemitsu growls, not even pausing to let him respond before continuing. "I swear if you've hurt her –"

"Baka-Iemitsu, of course I haven't hurt her, I'm a gentleman." He cuts in, making sure to speak in Italian. There's a huff on the other side of the line that he ignores.

"We're heading back to base, and you can see for yourself then. In either case I have a suspicion she's not who you think she is anyways, considering her husband is supposedly dead. The standing theory is time travel." He says dryly.

There's silence for a few seconds before the other man starts up again, sounding defeated.

"I check in Namimori, Reborn. She's not there. Tsuna was screaming his head off and she wasn't there. If they've been switched…"

Reborn leans back and hums.

"The theory says it's reversible." He says. Static answers him.

"And if it's not?" Iemitsu asks, quietly.

"Well, you better get used to loving older women then." Reborn says wryly, and then hangs up before Iemitsu can whine about it. He turns to where the medic is done with the woman and smiles at her.

"We're almost there, you should be able to go home soon." He says soothingly in Japanese. He gets a smile in response.

"I really must thank you for all this." She says, seemingly genuine. Reborn demurs and tips his hat, dark eyes glittering.

"I'm just so sorry you got caught up in all the ruckus. Hooligans, you know?" He says, sticking with the cover story even though he suspects both of them know it's false. She nods.

"We've arrived." The driver says, and he breaks eye contact to nod towards the men stationed outside as they slow down.

Outside the tall spires of the Vongola Mansion rise up over the tall walls.

* * *

Nana walks the empty halls, sandwiched in between two black clad men and very silently freaks out. She's been in the Vongola Mansion once before, although she remembers very little through the haze of fear and adrenaline.

She has the feeling she won't be remembering this time all that well either.

She's carrying Reborn in her arms, and there's a slight disconnect between the past and now, a phantom sensation of doing this before.

She's almost relieved when they finally get to a fancy wooden door bookended by two intimidating men with grim eyes. One of them nods at Reborn and knocks on the door before opening it, ushering them in.

"Reborn and Sawada-san, Boss." He says, before shutting the door and leaving them alone.

Nana can't help but look around curiously, knowing somehow that this is one room she hasn't been in before. It looks like it's trying to be warm and inviting, with plush carpet and peaceful painting on the walls, but just like the man behind the strong oak desk, it's shaded in something patient and dark.

It smells like old blood.

"Ah, welcome, welcome." Timoteo says, rising from his seat with a grandfatherly smile.

She smiles back. It's a reflex at this point. Reborn hops down and she feels the absence of heat more then she really misses the contact.

"Sawada Nana, was it?" He asks, holding out a hand to shake. "My name is Timoteo, and I'm the one in charge of these brats."

Reborn scoffs quietly, which just makes the old man laugh.

"Except for dear Reborn here of course, he's his own man really."

Nana nods, accepting the shake with only slight hesitation.

"Thank you for taking the time to see me. I must admit, I'm a little confused as to why I am here though. I'm sure a visit to the police would sort this out." She says, more for the sake of holding up pretences then because she truly wants to know.

"Oh no, we couldn't let you do such a thing all alone. It was our fault that you had such a hard fall after all, considering it was our construction that caused the accident. We would like to offer to take care of all the expenses." He says with an open expression. It's always been his strength, the ability to look friendly while plotting to meddle in your life. She's seen it before.

"Talking about the accident, I'm afraid I don't remember a lot. A concussion I think they said." She says with an apologetic smile. She lets herself wring the fabric of her dress. Timoteo nods with sympathy.

"Yes, I heard that must be the case. What do you remember?" He asks.

She pauses, makes a show of thinking, before pursing her lips.

"Not…A whole lot. I'm afraid a whole lot seems blank. I don't know what I was doing in Italy. It all gets fuzzy after a while." She says slowly.

"That's all?" Reborn pips up. She shrugs.

"I had a husband. And a son. I like Miso and disliked the neighbour's dog. I never finished university, but made for a rather abysmal housewife despite what people tended to say. I wasn't a good mother."

She pauses.

"There was a bomb of some kind."


	3. Chapter 3

AN:/ And now we start touching on the dark parts of this story. Changeling Child is my 'creepy and monstrous' dark fic, and this one seems to be leaning towards 'sad and lonely'. Sorry about that. Beta-ed by Tsurai as usual

Also, theres a poll up on my profile you should check out.

—

They set her up in one of the suites with a round the clock guard disguised as a doorman. It's partly for her own safety; if anyone were to figure out that they had a time traveler on their hands, very soon they wouldn't.

Not that it was looking like that would be a problem. She still didn't seem to remember anything useful.

"Could be an effect of time traveling. The universe's way of keeping the timeline complete," Reborn offers up afterwards, sitting in the Ninth's office.

"That's rather convenient of it," Timoteo says wryly. Reborn shrugs.

"The math checks out, and the medics are already running the DNA trace now," is all he says.

Both men are quiet for a while.

"And Iemitsu?" Timoteo asks eventually, crossing his fingers in front of his face and looking the assassin in the eye.

"Can't seem to decide what he wants to do, as usual," Reborn snorts.

The Ninth nods, thoughtful, before sighing.

"I suppose I will have to contact the Bovino to get some more information on what could have caused this. They are the only family currently dabbling in such a foolhardy science," he says, rubbing his temples.

"Are we sure? One of the other families could have thought to get a leg up on competition," Reborn asks.

"Which one? All the current families involved with research and development are still concerned with the rise of flame assisted weapons. Isn't that why the Bovino stopped their experiments in the first place?" the Ninth laughs.

"And yet we have a woman in the mansion who claims to be from the future," Reborn replies, "or at least it appears that she is."

The Ninth hums in thought, one hand on his chin, before rifling through some of his papers. On the wall, an old weathered clock chimes softly.

"Well, the best option I can think of currently is to have her return to Namimori. We will have to send someone with her, as a measure of surveillance, but we must keep it secret. If someone were to find out they might try to take advantage of her knowledge," he says finally, after the silence has stretched thin.

"Let me guess, it can't be someone officially affiliated with Vongola, for security's sake," Reborn mutters, pulling his hat down. Across from him the Ninth smiles.

"I'll owe you one," Timoteo says, and Reborn huffs. Both of them know that's not something he can refuse.

—

Nana sleeps fitfully, memories mixing with her nightmares like a particularly gruelling fever dream. In it she sees Tsuna, young again and rosy cheeked, standing tall in face of the burning shrapnel on the ground.

On her lap Lambo cries senselessly, tiny hands beating against her chest. The grim faces of her son's friends, his team, look young and vulnerable in the dim light.

She knows this isn't how it happened. Knows that she wasn't anywhere near this fight, that by the time the fighting got this bad her son was already an adult living on his own.

Still, the fear grips her heart, and she can see vividly how it would have gone down. Defiance in the face of death, hope to the last breath for all of them. The dream is soundless, besides the hiss of air that her brain translates to the roar of the fires set outside, but she looks up anyway when someone starts talking.

Chrome is older than the rest of them, having already seen too much to be a child when Nana met her the first time. She's wearing the torn clothing they found her in that last week, bloody hands clasped around a half-melted trident. She smiles at Nana and mouths something, before dissolving into shadow.

Without Mukuro to sustain her, half her body simply vanished. They had to have a closed casket funeral.

She hunches down and buries her face into dream-Lambo's curly hair. She doesn't cry, has used up most of her tears already, but she takes one gasping breath and lets it soak into the small body anyways.

Then she wakes up.

She blinks up at the ornate ceiling and sighs. Rubbing her face doesn't chase away the exhaustion any, but it forces her body to move and by the time she has scrubbed the dream away, she decides she might as well get up.

The room she is in is a warm and cosy one, filled with burnished wood furniture and thick golden carpets. The walls are a tasteful cream, the bed a soft yellow, and the windows large and bright.

It makes her all the more aware that for most people living in the mansion, it is a home, and not a just a workplace. She wonders if she should feel flattered to be included in the Vongola's inner sanctum.

She laughs a little to herself at the thought.

Try as Tsuna might, he had never been able to wash the bloodstains from Vongola. Hadn't been able to wear away the sharp corners and the hidden shadows. A Vongola without him would just be worse.

More likely they just want to keep an eye on her. She wonders at her chances of going home, of seeing her son, young again. She doesn't know how she should feel at the thought. She thinks back to dream-Lambo and wryly admits that he would probably have a better answer for her. Out of all of them, he was the only one who mourned sensibly.

Which might have been why he was one of the only ones to survive for very long afterwards.

She's been standing, staring at the wall with her hands on her hips for a while before the thought of leaving the bedroom comes to her. She's wearing her old dress, having forsaken the provided pajamas in exchange for something familiar, but she could dearly do with a shower.

She still smells like gunpowder.

She smoothes down a few wrinkles in the fabric and turns towards the heavy oak door. A quick peek outside has her facing an expectant face. It appears to be the same one that settled outside when she went in, even if there doesn't seem to be a hint of fatigue in the man at all.

"Yes ma'am?" he asks with a smile, in Japanese. "Would you like some breakfast this morning?"

She tucks a frown away from her mouth and, with practiced ease, smiles at him.

"Please. But first, if you would be so kind as to point me to the nearest bath…?" she murmurs, tugging her dress a little.

She gets a sympathetic look, that might be fake, and the man kicks off from the wall cheerfully.

"Of course, just this way," he beckons, waiting for her to exit the room before starting to walk down the hall. She wonders if Vongola is so hard pressed to find female members, or if they just didn't think of the awkwardness of having a male attendant.

At this point, she doesn't even care, as long as she can wash away the lingering feeling of her dream.

She doesn't have time to obsess over the past-future. Not if she wants to stop it from happening.

—

"I'm still not sure this is a good idea," Iemitsu says, voice coming out tiny from the phone. The Ninth hums in thought as he watches the dark form of Reborn accompany the willowish one of Sawada Nana.

"How old is your wife, Iemitsu?" he says slowly. There's silence on the line for a few seconds before the other man answers.

"She turned twenty-five in march."

The Ninth nods, even though Iemitsu can't see it.

"When we asked, she said she was forty-one. As far as I can tell she hasn't questioned why her son is only five."

There is no response.

"It is possible of course, that she is a plant or spy. But both of us know how unlikely that is," Timoteo says, tapping his fingers on his desk. A black car rolls out of the driveway and he watches it go, off to the airport.

"And time travel is?" Iemitsu says, voice rising. The Ninth rubs his chin and doesn't take his eyes from the road.

"Considering everything else? Yes," he replies, before sighing.

"Consider this, the DNA tests came back positive. Which means it's her, or someone engineered to be her. We can keep her locked up on suspicion, have to find someone to look after your young son, and possibly lose any sort of good will to what is almost conclusively your wife. Or, we could let her go back to her home and keep an eye on her."

"You mean so you can find out what she knows about the future," Iemitsu mutters, before sighing himself. "No, no, I get it. It's important we get to the bottom of this, without making any big waves. It's just. How are we going to explain to Tsuna what has happened to his mother? And where our Nana went?"

Timoteo laughs.

"You'll have to figure that out yourself, I'm afraid."

—

The plane ride over is awkward. Reborn is supposedly coming as an "escort", something she knows she wouldn't have blinked twice at fifteen years ago. Of course her husband's company would arrange an escort for her, considering how devoted he is.

She knows better now.

Reborn, for that matter, seems content to read his selection of Italian newspapers and flirt with the stewardess. She wonders how he deals with being physically a child in comparison to all the women he charms. Does he miss being able to have a relationship, or is that just another thing that the curse robbed him of?

Luckily, she has a large selection of in-flight entertainment to distract her, and no noisy children around to interrupt her. Mostly because Vongola has once again gone overboard and chartered a private jet.

"Oh my," she says, looking over the extensive selection of movies attached to her individual TV.

"Yes?" Reborn asks, turning towards her. She smiles at him and sheepishly shrugs.

"I just realised I can't remember if I have ever seen any of these. I might have, but then again, things are still so fuzzy."

It's not untrue. A lot of the small things from this time in her life are fuzzy, blurring together. Raising a child on her own was not conducive towards having the energy to notice things.

"If you would like a suggestion, 'Morrington's Downfall' is a superb piece of fiction," Reborn muses, flicking through the channels.

She joins him in browsing, and sure enough, 'Morrington's Downfall' is ranked first in the historical fiction category. She has to wonder if he had known that she studied history in university, with a minor in film studies, before dropping out.

It's probably in her file.

"That does look good," she says, reading the description. Part of her feels like she should try and continue the conversation, maybe about films since he seems to have some knowledge in that department.

Instead she plugs in the large and clunky headphones and starts the movie.

As she does, she can't help but muse on how odd the whole situation is. Of course, she has travelled fifteen years into the past, but she has had to get somewhat familiar with time travel just living with Lambo. No, that isn't the most odd part about it all, even if seeing the old Vongola was a shock.

It's the knot in her throat at the thought of seeing her son again. Of being able to hold him again, knowing as she does that he won't be what she remembers. It is quite likely that he won't ever be that child she remembers ever again.

After all, the only way back to her future is from the other side of the bomb. And no one's left to bring her back.

She watches the opening scene and hums. That's maybe not completely true. The Millefiore were still going strong when she left after all, but there's no one there that would be interested in retrieving her. She's not her son after all, and the only use she ever had to them was as leverage over the Vongola.

She wonders where her younger counterpart is. Not in the future that is for sure, or if she is, not for long. The lab would have been hot enough to melt bone after the bomb went off.

Perhaps she just ceased to exist. If that is so, Nana is a little sorry for her younger and more naïve self, but not enough to feel guilty about it. That version had buried her head in the sand for so long that she missed out on and left all her responsibilities on her son. She isn't sad to see her go.


End file.
